Image via WikipediaBill Gates thinks the world population will stabilize around nine billion people. Let's say he is right. Already two out of six billion people are connected to the internet. Say the penetration goes above 90% by the time world population hits seven billion people. Would that have implications for the social graph? You bet. The Color Social Graph Might Work Better For Books, Movies, Music
There is an old saying that everyone is connected to everyone else through six degrees of separation. Every random person out there knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows you. That magic number - six - might be lesser if the group size were smaller.
What if your pool is just one country? America? What if you are talking only of people who are fans of Bob Marley? What if you narrow down and are talking only of the 10 million Lady Gaga followers on Twitter? Then is the magic number maybe four? Five perhaps?
That is when you realize the social graph is an universe. There are not only many social graphs, there are many kinds of social graphs. Some are like galaxies, some are like stars, some are like planets.
And if all of humanity is online, and they are constantly voting, you end up with rather dynamic situations. You end up with music charts that change by the minute. Old songs could resurface on the charts because they can.
Kids early on get taught: never talk to strangers. And that will still be good advice for kids. But when you have high speed internet connecting all of humanity, you end up with scenarios where large scale positive group dynamics becomes possible. Big, good things become possible. I once heard a billionaire say there is enough marble just in the state of West Virginia to build a mansion for every family on the planet. But we are not there as humanity, we are not that organized. Once we can get every human being into one internet based social graph, or many, many graphs, maybe we can build a mansion for every family, finally. This social graph thing is very real.
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